June 2016

June 30, 2008

Ask Baby Hitler is an irregular and abnormal feature of Unremitting Failure. The opinions expressed are those of the infant Adolf Hitler, and are neither shared nor condoned by Unremitting Failure or its sponsor, Mein Comforter. Mein Comforter: They Provide 58% More Lebensraum!

Dear Gibby: Lies! All lies! The Large Hadron Collider in Meyrin Switzerland is the greatest scientific experiment in history, not some kind of long-gestating Nazi reprisal weapon designed to suck a world that rejected the peaceful advances of yours truly into the dark and infinite Nein. The latter idea would be absurd. That said, I urge you to pack your toothbrush mustache.

Dear Baby Hitler: Is there one specific song you put on when you want to establish a romantic mood? Anonymous

Dear Anonymous: Yes. Little River Band's Reminiscing. It's the perfect romance-generation machine. When feathered-hair genius Glenn Shorrock sings "I want to build my world around you," the panties come off, let me assure you. I also like Player's Baby Come Back. It may be the most shameless Hall & Oates ripoff of all time, but I guarantee you that when Peter Beckett goes falsetto on the line "Is there nothing left for me?" your special lady will hurl herself upon you like a famished Hermann Goering upon a lambchop.

Dear Baby Hitler: Are you a nature lover? Sunshine, Topeka

Dear Sunshine: It depends what you mean by nature. If by nature you mean trees and stuff, the answer is no. But that's not to say I don't enjoy the charms of a scenic landscape. I love the earth. I especially love it scorched.

Whenever we want to pay for the privilege of being treated like a ding-dong, we go to the cinema. There, in the magical glow of the silver screen, we can escape reality and spend two hours enthralled by our own intractable gullibility.

This weekend we went to see Angeline Jolie in Wanted, and just like we expected its sole aesthetic function was to remind us we're slackjawed. But hey, what were we expecting, right? Any movie that features a "1,000-year-old brotherhood of assassins" is bound to retardify the mind.

But Wanted doesn't stop there. No, it presents us with a series of assassinations each of which is more mind-bogglingly and unecessarily complex than the last. This leads us to suspect that membership in the fraternity is contingent upon attending the Rube Goldberg School of Murder.

For instance, the leading man (whose name we can't remember) is asked to bump off some poobah who travels the same route every day by limo. Does leading man guy simply blow the shit out of said poobah with a couple of rocket-propelled grenades? No, he slams his car sideways into another car so as to send his car spinning airborne over the limo, then shoots his target through the limo's open sunroof as he flies by overhead. Sure wish they taught that in driver's ed! Here's a brotherhood that has been around for a thousand years and they've never heard of Occam's Razor.

Why, if it hadn't been for a tantalizing near glimpse of Angeline Jolie's ass, the film would have been a total waste of our valueless time. Like every straight male in this galaxy and every other galaxy both real and imagined, we would give a Whitman's sampler of our digits AND two first-round draft picks for Sports Illustrated's annual swimsut issue for a chance to sip Cristal from Ms. Jolie's bellybutton. But is that enough to redeem this movie? No way.

Chicago, IL: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute was arrested last night by a police officer after allegedly soliciting sex in a Chicago airport bathroom. The police officer told reporters, "The famous opera, which was first performed in 1791 and remains one of the most beloved works in the operatic repertoire, entered the bathroom at 7:21 PM. The opera, which interestingly enough is in the form of a Singspiele, then proceeded to expose itself while making a lewd suggestion." In response to a reporter's question the officer added, "Magic? No, I wouldn't say its flute was magic exactly. But it was substantial." The Magic Flute says it will plead innocent to the charges. "I'm not surprised by this at all. You dress a bit flamboyantly in the city of Chicago and you might as well walk up to the nearest police officer and say cuff me. I just wish I looked better in my mug shot."

The discovery of a lost Bob Dylan song is cause for rejoicing. The long-rumored "Bongs of Freedom" was written in March 1964 and disappeared several days later, after becoming separated from Dylan at the Paramus Mall in New Jersey. It was rediscovered last month inside a fortune cookie opened by Mrs. Dolores Ferber of East Persnicketey, New York. I am pleased to be able to return "Bongs of Freedom" to its rightful place in the pantheon of classic Dylan songs, beside "Wiggle Wiggle" and "Ugliest Girl in the World." Alvie Kornputt, Folk Out! Magazine

The periscope of foreskin with its thousand horsehair qualmsIs plinking Chinese bird pants in a warbling greaseboat psalmWith a lonely spandex tuba in the hirsute short bus dawnUpon my ticky-tacky throne made out of bongos

The combat bells of passing gas are ringing in MadridIn a braying fog of hats and fens you purchased from the KidWhile the auctioneer is jumping on the shadow of El CidWho is indian wrestling with Courtly Cowboy Bozo

Smirking ancient bong hit with its armpits both aflamePacks the Dalai Lama's Speedo in a green valise of shameAnd the magic ring-ding orphan choir is calling out the nameOf the hamboat you spurned on Little Moron River

You say you know how tweezers make their elbows disappearThey feed a wooden nickel into Bo Diddley's earOne day the over there will come running over hereIn the stuttering of the raindrop's howling softshoe

I think I saw your bubblegum in a wad so fineStuck beneath a schooldesk in the steakhouse of my mindAnd the seven baying clamcakes are lost amongst the pinesOf the immaculate hairstyle of the seagull

To the building of the Great Pyramids. As we watched the laborers place stone upon stone, we turned to the guy overseeing the project and said, "You know, one day the Grateful Dead will play here." He looked at us. Then ran toward the workers shouting, "Take it back down! And hurry!"

June 29, 2008

And some paintings sidle up to you at the bar and say, "Can I buy you a sleazy hotel room?" Roses for Stalin falls into the latter category. Unless you're one of the 60 million Russians who still think Stalin's the greatest thing since sliced vodka, Roses for Stalin isn't the sort of painting you'll want hanging in your house. Let's face it, the guy was Hitler with a different mustache. And given this fact, we fail to see why it is Stalin got to dress up in an ice cream truck driver's uniform and have flowers handed to him by polite schoolchildren while we get pelted with rocks every time we get within 50 feet of a juvenile. Stalin probably even had his own ice cream truck and played really creepy ice cream truck music as he drove around Moscow selling Gulag Bars and Leningrad Licks and Lubyanka Lemon Pops and big cones of Show Trial Strawberry and Volga Cherry with Beria Berries. "What would you like?" he'd ask a child clutching a sticky kopek. "I don't know," the child would answer. "I know!" Stalin would say. "Give this Trotskyite a bullet in the neck. Next!"

Last night we were running down our list of the five actresses we'd most like to hop into bed with when Mrs. UF asked, "What about Cate Blanchett? You'd have to be nuts to not want to hop into bed with her." And instead of saying "We'll raise the issue at our next meeting" we blurted out "We would, if she dressed up like Bob Dylan like in I'm Not There."

This admission was followed by dead silence. Frankly, we were every bit as shocked as Mrs. UF. It is one thing to express to desire to have sex with a beautiful actress, quite another to basically admit that your desire to have sex with her is contingent upon her willingness to dress up like Bob Dylan.

Finally, Mrs. UF said, "I see." Then she stood and left the room, leaving us to queasily reconsider our entire life of unremitting straightness. And now Mrs. UF looks at us funny. The dogs look at us funny too. And we're left to sit alone, googling pics of Cate/Bob and sighing.

We can't relate to a single of one. Spiders, Bats, big orange rocks, big square-headed green mofos--they're all so unappetizing.

We want Surf'n'Turf Man.

Surf'n'Turf Man has everything we want in a superhero. He can fight on the land and he can fight on the sea and he is, we think everyone will agree, delicious. Surf'n'Turf man is a cow on land and a shrimp in the sea and there is nowhere an evildoer can run to where Surf'n'Turf Man can't run him down, except mountainous areas and deserts and swamplands and your major urban areas and the suburbs of said major urban areas and lakes and rivers and really cold and really hot places and the like. Otherwise, though, you are fucked, because you are faced with fighting either a fearless cow or a very fierce shrimp. Although it has to be admitted that neither animal is known for its fighting abilities or intelligence. So that you don't exactly have to worry about being beaten up or outsmarted by Surf'n'Turf Man, or having him smash through your bedroom window in the middle of the night.

But there are worse things, and more effective forms of justice, than mere apprehension. Mess with Surf'n'Turf Man, and good luck finding fresh milk products or a good Kung Pao shrimp. Or Surf'n'Turf at a quality steak house anywhere for that matter.

June 28, 2008

In 1991 the world community convened to hold the first Nuremberg-type trial of people responsible for 80s fitness videos. The most notorious of the defendants, of course, were Richard Simmons and Jane Fonda. Simmons was convicted and executed on March 9, 1992, wearing (at his request) the outfit he wore on the video cassette box of Disco Sweat. Fonda, in a decision that led to cries of unacceptable leniency, was sentenced to life and sent to Spandex Prison. There she wrote her famous diaries, a few entries from which follow.

4/19/93: I have nothing but time here, time to think upon my crimes. How many people leaped about in spandex lockstep because of me? At the time I thought nothing of it. My ambition blinded me to questions of morality. I wanted the whole world to wear leg warmers. I wanted to give the entire world a total workout that it could adapt to its level of fitness!

11/12/95: I will never be released. The Russians will never allow it. I'm alone here in Spandex, Cher having been released last month. Warm up those arms. Last set of shoulder shrugs. Up and down. Push it Push it Push it!!! I think I'm going mad.

1/17/98: It would almost be bearable here, if they would let me do aerobics.

Drank tequila sunrises in David Geffen's hot tub and compared turquoise jewelry. It was a time and a place that was very special, when you could go to the Troubadour and meet a special lady who was your soul mate and kick her out the next morning. We feel fortunate to have been there. There were good times aplenty. Like this one time we were with Don and Glenn and J.D. playing poker when Andrew Gold showed up. Andrew was a young up and comer which you only have to listen to "Lonely Boy" to appreciate. So we took him out back and drowned him in the hot tub because, frankly, who needs the competition. When the police arrived and asked us what happened we told them we drowned Andrew Gold in the hot tub and the police shrugged and left. What were they going to do? We were El Lay royalty and untouchable. We used to hit people while driving blind drunk in Laurel Canyon every night. Not a night went by that we didn't get blind drunk and hit somebody with our car in Laurel Canyon. And if you think we were bad, you should have seen Joni Mitchell. She'd go to parties with a gun and shoot people because she didn't like the cut of their stone-washed jeans. Then she'd order her PR person and her manager to take the body to Topanga Canyon and bury it. This was after Joni put out Ladies of the Canyon and could do no wrong. She must have killed 50 people, which despite her being a so-called "confessional artist" was something she never wrote a song about. You will not find a song called "50 Unmarked Graves in Topanga Canyon" on Blue. And that was nothing compared to Jackson Browne. He used to wander Laurel Canyon at night naked and coated in chicken blood preying on hippies. Got so nobody would go out at night. Even the coyotes disappeared. They took one look at Jackson and caught the first bus to the airport.